U.s. Crime Decline Levels Off In 2000

December 18, 2000

The nation's longest-running decline in crime ground to a virtual halt in the first half of 2000, falling only slightly overall with rape and assault on the rise, the FBI reported Monday. Serious crimes reported to police went down 0.3 percent in the first six months of this year, extending the crime decline to eight and a half years. The decline, however, was minuscule compared to the 7 percent drop in 1999 and the 9.5 percent fall for the same six-month period last year. "The 1990s crime drop has ended with the 1990s," said professor James Alan Fox of Northeastern University in Boston. "This is the criminal justice limbo stick, we just can't go any lower. We've had eight straight, wonderful years of declining crime rates, and at a certain point you just can't push those numbers further down and we've hit that point." The FBI figures, which come from more than 17,000 police agencies around the country, showed that murder declined 1.8 percent and robbery fell 2.6 percent, but both rape and aggravated assault went up 0.7 percent.